Should We Whine About Winning When They Don't Win the Way We Want Them To Win?

A bad process can occasionally get some short-term anomalous positive results (see the 2003 Royals). But that success just leads to additional bad moves and a longer term for the GM before he’s finally fired. But a bad process in the long-term will lead to lots of failure. That’s what we’ve seen from Dayton Moore. If the Royals have a 2003-like season this year, that will probably be the worst possible result. It will reinforce to Moore that he’s doing things the right way. It will convince Glass (even more than he’s already convinced) that Moore is the right guy to be the Royals GM and it will lengthen Moore’s tenure with the Royals.

Well, for me my enjoyment of Royals games is 3 pronged:
1. I enjoy every Royals win, whichever players contribute.
2. I enjoy it more when it happens in a well played game against a team with whom we are well matched (and especially if some of my favorite players contributed).
3. I enjoy it most when it moves us up the standings and makes us relevant in our division race.

But even though I have fun with any one victory, I have been with this team and heard about how “now we’ve turned the corner” to get too excited about any one win or even one month’s worth of wins, at least in the 3rd category of my enjoyment. 2003 and Lima-Time were fun, but I would like the chance to test out your thought experiment for real, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with asking “is this sustainable” when we win to try to project if it is or not.

To use a goofy analogy: I’m a pretty picky eater, and I’m also the youngest so my opinion didn’t matter much, so I just got used to having what everyone was having and picking it through it for what I wanted, leaving most of the food on my plate. But now that I’m an adult, I find eating is actually fun when I order the pizza I want and can eat it all, or cook my own dinner full of only ingredients I’ll actually enjoy.

For most of the past 25 years, I’ve enjoyed Royals baseball by picking through and finding small victories wherever I can – DDJ is not only cute, but a legitimate major league player! OR Isn’t that sweet that after playing in the minors for 10+ years Aaron Guiel makes it to the majors – good for him OR we won 64 games this year, which means we didn’t lose 100! OR we didn’t really come in last in the division (again) because we tied for 4th place with Cleveland!.

I am really looking forward to the day when I can enjoy my Royals fandom on all 3 of my levels, and analyzing the current state of the Royals and hearing other’s analysis of the farm system is part of preparing me for that.

I don’t want a fluke 2003 season. I want long-term success. It doesn’t even have to be MY way necessarily. He can show utter disdain for statistics all day if he wants so long as he builds a team that is successful for many seasons.

Basically about how to be a rational/informed Royals fan, and just taking every win as it is. A win like the last two gives me so much joy, and being unemployed, that really does help me keep my spirits up. Long term, I really do think the team is in the right direction, especially after hearing Dayton Moore expound more on what the “process” exactly is. I’m not so cynical as many on here to believe that deviations like signing veterans to 2-3 win contracts undo everything.

I figure, if I want to watch a dominant sports team, I have KU basketball (which I love). If I want to watch a team slowly build, I have both KC sports teams.

I understand the point about rooting anyway you feel, and if fans want to root against players such as kendall, bloomquist, betancourt, pods, guillen, and meche, go right ahead. But I wish fans on here would voice their distaste more towards the guy who signed them (moore) than the players themselves. For example, bloomquist. He’s hated because he’s been played more than he should have and he’s thought of as a “gritty ballplayer.” he has no control over how he’s perceived by moore and yost and the traditionalists who love him. Direct your hatred towards the guys who prop him up, not towards him.

I don’t think there is any such thing as a RATIONAL Royals fan.

Which poses a quandary for the subset of of Royals fan who intensely dislike him because he dares to be critical.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/4254/royals-winning-with-new-manager

I know this Major League roster is poorly conceived (Guillen, Kendall, YuBet, Pods, Willie and Ankiel specifically), and I want GMDM to recognize that and LEARN. For that reason I struggle with short term success.

At the same time, I’ve been deprived of any kind of hope as a Royals fan for so long, that a winning streak like we are currently on genuinely makes me happy. I love seeing guys like Betemit be the hero. I love that there are teams looking up at us in the standings.

Thus my conflict. I am of two minds.

Sounds like baseball has been upped in importance to the level of national security.

that need to get railed upon. But as soon as the game starts they are all my Royals and I will cheer for them when they do well and throw shoes at my tv (computer now…) when they suck.

Pretty simple really.

that supports success, regardless. this is based on the simple premise that more wins increases fan support, which in theory will directly increase revenue, which increases the amount of money we have to retain players or, on occasion, add players.

i understand the concern that moore might feel validated when and if this team succeeds, but i think two important considerations need mention:

  1) as mentioned above, we almost had to sign some sort of free agents in order to avoid what baltimore is doing. maybe not to be competitive, but at least to avoid humiliation. this is a direct result of a relatively depleted farm system at the upper levels – players are getting there now, but realistically one or two years ago there wasn’t much at all at AA or AAA. at all. and, please, seriously be realistic about kila and gordon. (i’m not asserting that they are good or bad, but those two examples are not enough to refute the suggestion)

  2) how are we winning? last night, for example, was a great win supported by our younger players. we can’t assume that moore will feel validated with an average season and thus feel the need to continuing to sign major league filler – seeing wins which derive of good play by maier, bert and butler may actually have the opposite effect – the “hey, these guys are creating wins, not the filler, so lets stop with the filler”.

we can’t be too presumptive. or predictable, for that matter.

As it is, they just have a stretch of games where they are a couple games over .500. But the team is still on pace to win about 74 games. So the current question should be, “Should We Whine About The Losing?” Because the Royals are likely to have yet another losing season.

I would be happy the team played well, even overachieved, but at the same time leary that there’s a shoe going to drop somwhere. The shoe could be extension of the stop-gap players we can’t stand, or a horrific slide back into putridity that we’ve gotten used to seeing. Either way, I find myself looking for the bad to happen, hoping like hell that it doesn’ t happen.
I don’t actually care who helps the team win on any given game. It is, after all, a team game, not an individual sport. That being said, I almost want the suck-krew, (Kendall, Pods, Guillen, Ankiel, Yuni, and to a lesser degree Willie B) to have carreer years, overachieve and do better than anyone expects them to. Why? Perhaps it will make another team or teams view them as valuable and trade for them to get them off our team. Trade the lot of em for a bag of rubber nipples for all I care. But if they’re here, maybe I can hope they have real good seasons for us. I actually find myself wanting Ankiel to reinjure himself, (not that I want to see anyone hurt, I don’t) I just don’t want him to come out of the minors, at all, ever, for as long as he’s a Royal.
One thing I do see positively on this team over other versions in the past, is the fire, the drive to win, the belief the team can win. For whatever reasons, the team is drinking the Yost-aid and it seems to be working. You can see this team doesn’t give in late in games like past versions did, or even the same team led by Hillman. I see that as refreshing, and makes me root for the Royals a lot more than I used to.
Sorry for lengthy comment, I don’t post often